What is the reason for no retexturing on Mainland?

I know there has to be a good reason for this, but what is it, exactly? I own a nice 4608 plot of mainland, and I really want to create a "winter wonderland" for the holidays and through January. However, the only way to get snow on my ground is to do it with prims, and that doesn't work on all of it as my land is pefectly flat in a large area, but then slopes up at one part and down at another. I have an idea to at least make it look halfway decent, but was just wondering why we don't have different land texture options on mainland. I know they do on islands, and I'm never going to be owning one of those, so won't ever have that option. I would think it would make sense to have a drop down or something under edit terrain option in about land, then just pick from maybe grass, sand, granite and snow.

Because there are only 4 ground textures per sim. Other people also own land there. Who decides?

I knew there had to be a good reason. So, only a whole Sim could be retextured, as opposed to retexturing individual parcels. Makes sense, I guess. Just wish it could work differently. Another quick question (although I'm sure it's an impossibility, but.....) if I could get other owners in the sim to agree, would LL then temporarily change the texture for the season? Between my husband and I, we own about half the sim, I think......lol. Of course, it's impossible to get people to agree to something like that, so the question is purely hypothetical, but would still be nice to know.

No they wouldn't. You have to buy land in a mainland snow sim.

Me!

edit: oh.. sorry.. thought you were asking for volunteers...

It would be nice to have 'spray-on' ground texture options that you apply in the same way as you terraform. The 'sprayed' texture could have a diffuse edge about 3m wide, so you wouldn't get nasty abrupt colour changes, and, like terraforming, it would only work on your own land.

Exactly. I also think that would look a lot better to neighbors then using textured prims.

If your land is perfectly flat, can't you use one or two huge prims and create a texture to that effect yourself?

Probably - or a series of 10m x 10m ones. You can even put tree shadows etc on them - but as soon as you want to have any landscaping that all goes out the window!

The reason is that you would end up with a patchwork of textures that would end up looking ghastly

A lot of people do snow themed areas for the holidays and it usually is done with prims, either flat or using half circles. If you were really adventurous you could probably do something really cool with sculpties....

This is what I ended up doing. And the areas I couldn't work out because of slopes, I just cut off with walls that have a winter scene on the inside, but clear on the outside (and phantom) so as not to block anyone's view. It looks okay, but still with there was an easier way. Oh, well.....at least I can still attaine my winter wonderland dream, even if it's not quite as "perfect" as I pictured. I did realize that when it's time to decorate my RL home, I'll probably be burned out on Christmas decorating.....lol. Still, have kiddies, so have to decorate at RL home, too.

LL won't ever change sim terrain textures on the mainland, even if one person owns the whole region, because then it wouldn't mesh with the adjacent regions.

There IS a way to get snow on the Mainland, however!

You can purchase a "weather system" that will make particle snow, which falls from a cloud and blankets what is below with snow! The following is from the info card on the system I own.

"WeatherSystem" by Damanios Thetan
Damania (190, 126, 36)

This weathersystem offers:

- rain: slight drizzle, moderate rain and heavy rain, with full sound support
- snow: from a slight snowfall to a heavy snowstorm
- clouds, changing darkness and density based on the weather conditions
- thunder & lightning, including local lighting effects, animations and multiple sound effects
- snow that actually stays and slowly covers the ground, creating a winter athmosphere
- covers a square area from 400m2 (small plot) to 19600m2 (1/3 of a sim)
- automatic random weather changes (either snow or rain/thunder)
- autorezzing emitters at selectable heights

Notice:
The weathersystem is using particles. Particles will not be stopped by roofs or walls. This mean that it can cause snow or rain
inside houses. It's possible to move the individual emitters by selecting. Options->show emitters, and reposition them so the
precipitation only falls in the places you want it to fall.

Thanks, Ceera. I've heard of that weather system, but didn't realize that it actually allowed snow to lay on the ground! I'll have to do a search for that. I have a home by Damani, so should be too hard to find his weather system. I was wondering if there was some kind of temp-rezz snow emitter. I have some of the ones in the sky to make snow fall, but thought maybe there would be a particle emitter for the ground that would produce a ground cover of snow, and it sounds like this weather system will do that. Thanks!

I am having the same problem with mainland, I tried giant prims, half circles and scuplties still looks kind of ewwww. I might try the weather system if I can find it !

"WeatherSystem" by Damanios Thetan
Damania (190, 126, 36)

Look up the Damania sim on the map, type in those coordinates, and teleport to the store.

One of the most spiffy sims to visit on the Grid!

While probably true, I can't image it would look any worse than the ad farms or some of the really obnoxious builds.

I must say, though, the "hailcover" feature is particularly, unnecessarily... updatey...

I created a suggestion in JIRA a while back for LL to develop "seasons" in SL, where the ground textures would change according to the time of year.

https://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-2200